Software Architecture and The Cloud

Has the promise of the Cloud Arrived?

For business, new software tools can dramatically impact your efficiency and provide new ways in which to engage your customer.  Providing access to information for any of your stakeholders on any platform anywhere in the world provides a competitive advantage not seen before. As computers and software have made quantum leaps forward in terms of capabilities, speculation has continued to grow regarding what the future of computing will look like.

“The Network is the Computer” was coined by John Gage from Sun MicroSystems several years ago; while many of these predictions appear early, this statement has now become a reality and is significantly enabling software developers to optimize organizations through improved tools and technologies. Two specific advancements have occurred over the past decade that have totally changed the dynamics for software development- Distributed Software Architecture and the availability of virtually unlimited resources.  Let’s review both.

Distributed Software Architecture

Distributed Software Architecture provides the ability to disaggregate applications and leverage components from almost any source, anywhere on the planet.  For a common example, consider the integration of Google Maps into an application.  In its simplest form, you can elect to display a single location on a map to provide some basic information or more powerfully you can overlay information about hundreds of locations to illustrate information or activities over any geography.  Google provides access to the drive times between points, so you can leverage this function for many data points to prioritize activities based on real-time traffic data and provide up to the second status.  Calling upon distributed applications for data validation, communications, statistics increases the power of your systems dramatically.

Many web-based software tools now feature rich Application Programming Interfaces that allow other software to call upon them (over the internet) to complete their tasks.  The result is significantly reduced cost of development as you can rely on multiple existing components to build your applications and improved stability as many of these services have been thoroughly tested and are supported.

Virtually Unlimited Resources

The global supply of computing power and storage capacity continues to grow at unprecedented rates and the cost to access these resources continues to plummet.  This exceptional low-cost capacity provides a powerful engine for tasks that traditionally would have been placed on a localized server farms, mainframes or PC platforms which have limited their capabilities.  Working with data-sets with hundreds of millions of transactions which were only possible in the largest of enterprise environments are now possible for the average business consumer. The result – you can do almost anything – from rendering Virtual/Augmented Reality applications, providing real-time business analytics with billions of data points just to name some.

So…What does it all mean?

You now have a lasso around the cloud – what now…

CoreSolutions of London, Ontario, is a locally acclaimed software development firm with over 25 years of experience. CoreSolutions’ team of experts, including developers and project managers, build web or mobile applications using the latest technology and tools and will assist you through all phases of the project including brainstorming, requirements planning and project management. Connect with CoreSolutions today to start your project with a Free Business Systems Requirement.